Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Fading Gigolo Review

In
“Fading Gigolo”—an entertaining and bizarre yet slight picture-- Woody Allen
plays a pimp to John Turturro’s Gigolo. Wait! Did I really just write that?
Woody Allen and pimp in the same sentence? It’s a fresh and brilliantly absurd
bit of casting that’s easily the best part of the movie, especially if you’re
familiar with Allen’s history of acting on the big screen.

The
now seventy-eight-year-old writer-director has made a name for himself over the
years playing the same neurotic, insecure, fast talking fellow again and again,
usually in his own movies. Pondering the mortality and the meaning of
existence, bellyaching about little things people do, taking Zoloft and seeing
an analyst twice a week. The “Woody” persona has practically become ingrained
in the culture and is a personal favorite of mine. Ever since being introduced
to him in movies like “Annie Hall” and “Hannah and her Sisters” I’ve come to
love Allen’s unique presence on screen, almost as much as the movies
themselves.

In
“Gigolo,” Allen plays more or less the same character. He’s insecure,
fast-talking, on Zoloft, seeing an analyst twice a week and pondering mortality
and the meaning of existence. However, this time Allen—who plays the character
Murray, a bookshop owner who has gone out of business—is more gutsier and
proactive. He’s the one who suggests that his friend Fiorvante (Turturro, who
also wrote and directed the move), become a Gigolo for some extra money.

You
read that right. Usually you’d expect that the Allen character would have to be
talked into such an odd endeavor. Not so. In this case, Murray is the confident
one who tells Fiorvante that he’s attractive and is good at sex, while
Fiorvante is the shy one reluctant to do it. The film is at its best when it
focuses on Murray and Fiorvante’s friendship and their adventures in the
business that mainly involve two lonely sex crazed women who want to have a
threesome. There’s something endearing and wonderfully silly about it and
Turturro and Allen play off one another near perfectly.

It’s
when “Fading Gigolo” veers away from the friendship and turns into a love story
that it runs into problems. One of Fiorvante’s clients is Avigal (Vanessa
Paradis), a strict Hasidic widow. They don’t have sex but he does massage her
back, which apparently is a big no no in her religion. Never the less it
provides her with some pleasure and mends the loneliness she’s been feeling for
quite some time. One of the underlying themes of “Gigolo” seems to be that the
gigolo service can provide therapy to lonely women.

After
there first meeting the two develop a friendship and Fiorvante begins to get
feelings for her. Unfortunately, since the movie is only ninety minutes,
neither the relationship nor the theme I mentioned above can be effectively explored,
and in the end looks inferior when compared to the wacky gigolo stuff involving
Murray and Fiorvante. I also could have done without Liev Schreiber as Dovi, a
neighborhood watch captain who lives in Avigal’s neighborhood and is also in
love with her and becomes suspicious of what’s going on. Again the character
and the side plot simply don’t effloresce into anything resonant.

And
yet, I still enjoyed myself during “Fading Gigolo.” I enjoyed watching Allen
(especially, Allen. I could watch a whole devoted to Murray) and Turturro
together as they navigate the male prostitute business. The film also has a
jazzy, energetic score by Abraham Laboriel and Bill Maxwell that keeps things
moving along nicely, even if the overall movie is rather insignificant.